14 hunger strikers in hospital

Up to 14 people were in hospital last night as a hunger strike at an Australian refugee camp on the Pacific island of Nauru entered its second week.

Nearly three dozen people had joined the protest, said supporters. Refugees in Nauru's Topside camp are mainly Afghan Hazaras, along with some Iraqis, many of whom have been on the island for more than two years.

Some inmates say they were better treated under the Taliban, a claim denied by the Australian immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone.

"We are not talking about refugees here, we're talking about people who wanted to come in the back door to Australia and have been caught out and cannot come, and they are simply refusing to go home," she told ABC radio. "I think it's wrong in fact to say they're being detained on Nauru - they can go home any time they like."

Nauru detainees are the remnants of the Pacific solution, the policy in which asylum-seekers arriving by boat are held in Pacific countries.

Opposition parties have renewed calls to close the camp, while a court case in Melbourne seeks to free all 284 detainees, 93 of whom are children, alleging they have been falsely imprisoned.